Celebrate Magna Carta In 2015

Lord Denning, most celebrated of all twentieth-century jurists, declared: “Magna Carta is the greatest constitutional document of all times—the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”

The few copies that survive from the thirteenth century are mostly housed in our cathedrals, tended like the relics that were removed at the Reformation. One is on display in the Australian Parliament in Canberra. Another hangs next to the Declaration of Independence in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Here, in short, is the Anglosphere’s unifying text.

As an aside, there is also a campaign underway to bring a copy of the Magna Carta to Canada, for its anniversary next year.